January 14th Blogger Sentiment Poll

FROM TICKER SENSE: The bloggers have stayed bullish for the longest streak since the poll began.

I voted neutral again and my stock account remains 90% invested in an array of tech, medical, biotech, and mining. I am also hedged (short 35%) QQQQ, SPY & RSP and long SDS, DXD and 10% cash. Last week I sold VRSN & 1/2 CDE position and bought calls on EMC.

The last thing I want to own are other financials, since, like E-Trade, CountryWide and Citi, they are the classic cockroach stocks. I have no idea where this sub-prime contagion is going to end or lead to. The contagion will keep appearing. But, trying to time the bottom when we have no real idea what the exposure is to bad loans is premature and way too risky. Read: Why I'm Short The Financial Stocks

CNBC is nothing more than "Infotainment", because people want to know what happened yesterday and what's happening right now. But, what they are missing is a repricing of the entire planet. Hard money is trump. The public is just waking up to that notion. Gold is the new copper and food is the new oil.

• Read Jim Kingsdale's piece on "The Price of Oil"
• Friday Market Sentiment from HeadlineCharts
• Relative Sentiment and the Equity Put/Call Ratio from Dr. Brett
• Breaking Down the Current Market Action from Gary Kaltbaum

As we rebalance our investments we need to move our assets to places where they're less dependent on the U.S. dollar. The dollar will continue to decline at least for the remaining term of this administration. The dollar's value is largely determined by what you can earn in government bonds in the U.S. versus what you can earn overseas. Here our short-term rates are low, and are being kept low by a Fed Reserve keen on stimulating our economy and saving our banks and sundry financial institutions. Overseas, they are raising rates to fight inflation. Hence the gap is widening, providing less and less incentive for anyone to give us their money. If a bunch of our large lenders -- China, Japan, the Mideast oil countries, etc. wake up one morning and say "Yuchy dollar!" a major crash in the U.S. dollar is possible.

That's why I remain bullish on gold and silver. But while the short-term outlook for metals and oil may be inauspicious, precious metals should live up to their name this year. There is plenty of scope for further gains in gold, which in real terms is still far off its 1980 peak of over $2,000. Further dollar weakness, worries over the US and global economy, the ongoing credit crunch, the shaky geopolitical environment, "more than a whiff of inflation" - as Graham Birch of Blackrock's Gold and General fund puts it - all look set to give the ultimate safe haven and store of value a further fillip.

Forecast of the year, made by Ben Bernanke, Fed Chairman, before the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress on March 28, 2007. Note the date:
"At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained."